Local Labour and Diversity remain hot topics for Construction

10 Nov There has been much talk lately in the Construction industry around local labour and diversity issues. They continue to be key focus areas for companies and the industry as a whole as a couple of recent opinion pieces on the always readable CN Plus have shown.

Local Labour

In his recent opinion piece, Steve Hindley, chairman of the CBI Construction Council stated,“If construction companies make it a priority to purchase and employ locally wherever possible – to buy materials from local suppliers and to subcontract primarily to local firms – the benefits of a particular building project in a small region can be immense.”

However it can be difficult for construction companies to track and manage local labour recruitment, but there are solutions available to make this easy for site managers. A good example of this was Carillion’s recent Southmead Hospital build in Bristol. By using the MSite Local Labour module, Carillion were able to efficiently monitor and achieve their target of employing 85% of the workforce from the local area.

Diversity

It is no longer acceptable to simply provide a percentage of employees classed as local; the requirement now is often to include a significant list of statistics on the likes of ethnicity, age, lone parents, sex, people with disabilities and number of low skilled workers to name just a few.

More and more project teams are seeing Diversity as a very real and very labour intensive distraction. But as Liz Cross, managing director at The Correctives, said recently on CN Plus, “If you’re thinking diversity is a ‘nice-to-have’, you’re probably overlooking the evidence that it’s really a game changer; a differentiator between those who win the most work, win it profitability and on a sustainable basis”.

The problem that remains is all these measurables have to be aligned to reporting against all workers, apprentices, previously employed and length of service with the added challenge of understanding all of the statistics above against local boroughs separately and as a whole. But it invariably falls to the project or site manager to produce these reports or to take on additional staff to do it for them.

I was on a Major Build in London where we have recently deployed diversity reporting into their existing MSite system. The scheme in question includes 3 projects all managed as one system and they have challenging diversity targets to achieve under the terms of their contract.

It transpires that without the automation of the report they would have to employ a full time resource to capture the relevant information and manage the delivery of the report on a monthly basis at each of the 3 sites.

Cumulative Reporting Across the Entire Business (All Sites)

The true benefits of such solutions are realised when applied across a company’s entire estate. Imagine being able to see immediately if you are meeting your local labour and diversity targets not just on one site, but across all sites. Furthermore what if you could simply access the same reports by contractor thus facilitating the issuance and monitoring of sub-contractor KPIs to support the commitment of your business as the main contractor.

The competitive advantage that this can give companies on public sector tenders in particular is obvious. Being able to demonstrate with real live data from your sites that your company is a diverse employer committed to supporting local economies through employing local labour will elevate you above your competitors and could be a key differentiator when it comes to the awarding of works.

{{cta(‘4add57f2-a97f-44a9-a9bc-b9a1531f8f29′,’justifyright’)}} Find out how MSite can simplify your local labour and diversity reporting to help ensure you meet your targets.